You are here: Home » Uncategorized » What to Expect During Electrical Rough-In of Your New Home

What to Expect During Electrical Rough-In of Your New Home

onJuly 18, 2018

Mark Robinson: Hi, and welcome back to the Envision. Home At Last. video series. We’re on site today. We’re talking with Jeff Disher from Disher Electric. Now, an electrician is one of the trades on site that needs to be licensed and certified. So first, let’s talk about that. Jeff, what does that entail?

Jeff Disher: Well, first of all, you got to be accepted into the apprenticeship. The apprenticeship is five years long but in between there and after that, you have to have continuing education. Just not a matter of getting your license, it’s a matter of maintaining that license and keeping the classes and codes updated for your license.

Robinson: So, the important part of this is: homeowners need to really pay attention to who it is that they’re hiring to work on their job.

Disher: Sure.

Robinson: Now here on site we want to see what it takes to rough in a house. Behind us here is a pedestal. Jeff, walk us through this, how does this happen?

Disher: You have to find out, really, who’d be serving your residents, whether it’d be a Wisconsin Public Service, Alliant energy, or WE energies of that sort. But finding out who that is, and then an application has to be filled out by the homeowner or the contractor with it or together. Fill that application out. Get that in as soon as possible and then pay any bills for may need to be paid for that to proceed. Then when we get that OK’d, the basement gets back filled. We come in, we set the pedestal.

Robinson: And that’s ultimately then what triggers getting the power from the road to the house?

Disher: Exactly. Then the utility company will send in a contractor or do it themselves, trench in. Bring the wires in that and fire it up.

Robinson: Tell me what’s going on here?

Disher: Well, we’ve got our 200 amp service here. That’s normal on a house (a residential house). We come in from the pedestal. We come down. This is where our circuits will come out of. Whether it’d be the bathroom circuits, living room circuits, or bedroom and all those.

Robinson: So all those leads come down, they’re actually running throughout the house. Now, why don’t we explain to people how this system differs from the old system with fuses.

Disher: What we’ve got is a breaker system. They’re new, up-to-date. There’s new codes to that too. There’s arc-fault breakers and panels equipped for all those things. We have breakers that can trip and reset and it tells you that it’s tripped.

Robinson: Are all the circuits live in rough-in or is that later?

Disher: We’d not rough them in ’cause we don’t accidentally turning on circuits that we do not want live. Circuits that don’t have outlets in them and dangerous at that time.

Robinson: OK.

Disher: So, we won’t do that until trim out or whatever, so.

Robinson: OK and then at the final, we’ll get inspection of this. The actual inspector will come in and say “Yeah, everything’s good to go.”

Disher: Yes, gets inspected to check to make sure everything’s up to code and everything else that we’ve put the arc-fault breakers in place.

Robinson: Why don’t you explain what a homeowner can do to help you out?

Disher: Have them come through as a walk through first of all before we do rough in but we also encourage them to get through and try to make they have their plans set aside, the specifics of what they’re looking for in their home. We also look for cabinet drawings. Whether it be that or their vanity drawings, their bathrooms, kitchens, and everything else. So it gives us an idea what we’re looking for and what we can plan for.

Robinson: So, that’s gonna tell them where lighting is going to be important for you to rough-in for or you’re going to need to know where a range is, or a microwave or refrigerator. All those things, so you know where those leads go, correct?

Disher: Exactly, yes. And what they would need to plan for, whether it’d be electric oven or gas oven and stuff like that. We also want to make sure that the homeowners are aware of the different colors of devices: whether it’d be light almond, white or ivory are the three basic ones. And then we come in and actually install them, so.

Robinson: Ok and they’re generally bringing in their lights to you, right.

Disher: Yeah, normally what that would be is they’ll pick their lights out ahead of time, bring their lights, set them out in the place they want or at least mark them which part of the house they go to.

Robinson: And at that point, that’s where you get your final inspection?

Disher: Yes, after we trim out and everything we get final inspection. Inspector comes in and makes sure everything is up to code and go from there.

Robinson: Ok, good. Well, I hope you found this information helpful. If you did, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on our website which is envisionhomeatlast.com. We’ll see you next time.

Part P

Building Regulations require domestic electrical installations to be installed in a safe manner and document PART P outlines this so that all electrical work undertaken is compliant with British Regulations.

Emergency Work

We understand that electrical emergencies do occur so contact us and we will be with you as quick as we can. Contact us for your electrical emergency work.